WILMINGTON, Mass. — The second day of Bruins practice since the team’s return from Europe began with a pre-session tutorial in power-play strategy, as assistant coaches Geoff Ward and Doug Jarvis put the troops through the paces with limited penalty-killer interference.

agreed. Boston’s power plays are predictable and, thus, easy to prepare for. I suspect Julien doesn’t like to waiver, but straying from a well-worked plan allows for an element of surprise that this team lacks. it is time to rethink the offensive side of the Boston Bruins’ special teams.

Too much focus on the points, in my opinion. The Bruins, whether at full strength or on the PP, seem like they will do anything to point the puck for a 40 footer. Too much. Those hardly ever go in. They are also very easy to defend, especially when the other team knows that’s all you do

It’s a little too soon to be worrying about the PP, but there’s definitely a lot of worrisome signs already.

My biggest thing — as a lot of us barked about last year, especially during Round 1 — was traffic in front of the opposing goalie. Put a big cog like Lucic, Wheeler, and even Recchi (who plays bigger than his 5’10” stature) on the top of the crease and good things will happen.

Aaron: Wheeler-Krejci-Recchi was a nice combo out there in Sunday’s game. Seguin-Bergeron-Horton looked promising, too, but there can’t be three right-handed shots there.

Also, for gods sake give Horton the ice time on the PP. Game 1 he had all of 20 seconds of PP TOI. He’s the most gifted shooter on the team and you leave him off the PP in favour of Recchi, Ryder, Wheeler who all saw more man advantage ice time? Baffling

I suspect that if you want to see this roster pull off a lot of nice one-timers, you need to produce your own with something like the SNES NHL ’94 ROM hack linked from my screenname. you could even use a hex editor to replace Marc Savard with Miro Satan. I have high hopes for this team, but an excess of fancy scoring isn’t on the proverbial list.

The problem with evaluating the power play after a two game set with the same team is that it is hard to separate ineffective powerplay from an effective penalty kill. I’ll be interested to see what the PP does over the next week or so.

Oh, and lets not forget the absolute lack of one timers. Someone puts a cross ice pass on the tape and the receiver of that sauce waits to get a solid wrister off. Let that thing fly one time, before the goalie gets across the net. You have a better chance at scoring and a higher rebound percentage.

Sorry, don’t mean to rail against the PP, but these things are glaring to me and drive me nuts.

GR90: “If the B’s do this well, it opens up the point play, where guys like Chara and Boychuck can get some bombs on net to produce rebounds. ”

Which brings up another issue, these points players have to find/wait for open shooting lanes and then get their shots on net, not 5′ wide. Too many blocked shots out high (creating shorthanded rushes and/or broken plays) and too many shots missing the net.

PCL- you hit the nail on the head with this one. There’s zero movement on the PP… in every other sport, the only way to beat a zone defense is via ball/puck and personnel movement. Standing still and passing the puck while running the occasional cycle isn’t going to do it for this team. I’m praying they find a way to get guys like Horton, Sequin, Krejci, or even Ryder open in the slot so that they can launch some wristers at the goaltender. Also, the Chara-to-backdoor play worked fairly well last year… I’d like to see it reincarnated with him and other players as well.

If the B’s do this well, it opens up the point play, where guys like Chara and Boychuck can get some bombs on net to produce rebounds. It’s all about the variation, and I hope the coaching staff sees that.